A first novel from the editor of the Women on Women series: an earnest tale of doomed lesbian love in a wonderfully rendered out- of-season Paris setting. Holoch's story takes place over a wintery week in the Paris that exists after the tourists have gone home and the cold has driven the boulevardiers indoors. The days are short, the streets empty, and the mood dark, which makes the city a fitting backdrop for a poignant love affair that can't last. Miriam, a translator of French novels, has impulsively flown to Paris to check up on her longtime friend, Italian-born Gabriella. Usually a regular correspondent, Gabriella has stopped writing, and Miriam worries (she's overly sensitive and does this a lot) that something is wrong. She's been in love—so far unrequited—with Gabriella since the two met in New York, when Gabriella and her husband Carlo were both teaching at Columbia. Now, like the knight-errant Gabriella teasingly suggests she resembles, Miriam feels she may have to rescue Gabriella from Carlo. The couple have had a long-troubled and bitter relationship and are currently separated: Gabriella working in Paris, Carlo in New York, and their three young daughters being cared for by relatives in Marseilles. As the week passes, Miriam (who narrates) describes the brief but intensely erotic affair she now has with Gabriella and somberly recalls her past visits to Paris, her previous lovers, and her own mother's death. But the terrible secrets Gabriella confesses to, as well as Gabriella's still confused feelings for Carlo, who wants the family together again, persuade Miriam that their affair is doomed. Angry and unhappy, she leaves Paris knowing that once back in New York her ``memories would be like so many aching bruises, unpredictably and erratically sensitive.'' A rather stiff and unconvincing debut: Holoch's lovers never quite come alive or glow as the City of Light does, even in this dark time of year.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1998
ISBN: 0-571-19922-4
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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